by J. Douglas Thompson | Apr 11, 2023 | General Information
Wondering while Wandering…
…an artist’s limp toward finding ‘Radiance Through the Rain’
‘May the Rain of Suffering Soften Our Hearts,
Seeping Radiance to Our Thirsty Places.’
- Douglas Thompson© 2022
Opportunity knocks occasionally as requests arrive to speak at events regarding ‘Why I paint what I paint.’ The following are my notes from a short talk I gave at McMaster Divinity School, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, January 17, 2023. Various parts of this are found in my introductory sections here in this blog. Once again, in this and several blogs to come, I’m laying a foundation of my journey as a creative/painter. I will of course get into the actual acts of putting acrylic paint to canvas or board as we go along in future posts. I prefer to call these posts: ‘Thought Collections on Art and Life through an Artist’s Eyes’ rather than ‘blogs.’
McMaster Divinity School Talk
As I’ve quoted before on various occasions, C.S. Lewis, author of “The Chronicles of Narnia” and Oxford professor stated: “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen. Not only because I see it, but because I see everything by it.” Prolific author, artist, and apologist, G.K. Chesterton, friend and colleague of Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien have together given us the wonder of using artistic imagination as a means of pointing to truth with their nuanced writings! As you’ve no doubt picked up, this too is my chosen world-view.
Chesterton writes, “To be thankful is the highest form of thought and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder. Thanklessness, then, must be the lowest form of thought, and ingratitude is discontentment, bankrupted of wonder.”
Welcome to my studio!
Here, working through a painting is physically, mentally, and emotionally demanding and for me a spiritual act. It is not a trite plaything, but involves intense involvement on many levels. This is why my wife warns me by ringing a little bell before entering the studio. I am off in a far country, wandering multiple paths and any sudden interruption can result in a tailspin of PTSD over-reaction. The bell helps me come back to a single point.
The actual act of putting paint to canvas is almost subconscious as simultaneously disparate thoughts and techniques dance their many forms from my imagination through my painting tools, brushes, towels or rags.
Some of those thoughts meander back to my childhood surrounded in institutional and family abuses that occurred living for over eleven years in an iron-fisted enclosed community in western Canada. The trauma from that time has affected my life and work until this day. My early paintings reflected that dark side and were an expression of unresolved issues that presented themselves with symptoms such as depression and anger. Today, after many years of hard work, my life and paintings attempt at presenting more light and hope.
John Ruskin, the famed British water colorist and artistic companion of JMW Turner said,“ The greatest thing a human soul ever does in this world is to see something, and tell what it saw in a plain way. Hundreds of people can talk for one who can think, but thousands can think for one who can see.”
My purpose therefore as an artist, is to ‘Make Aware’…to encourage people to take the time to truly savor and care for what they see. The thought that part of my personal act of making art is to be a conduit of pointing toward the Creator is humbling at best.
I personally am a follower of who C.S. Lewis describes as ‘Aslan’ or ‘the Word,’ one who was and yet still is. John 1:1-3 is chapter and verse from the New Testament part of the Bible.“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.” This of course refers to Jesus of Nazareth! The transcendent God becoming flesh to enter with us even now, into our deepest pain and joy!
Caring for the creation as good ecologists is a mandate given to all human kind. I stand with that as part of my faith, to see the natural world as something to be cherished and nurtured…we are to be good ‘gardeners’ in the broadest sense of the word.
I am a wanderer…
I am a broken struggler…
I am in process…
I am a fighter – I’ve chosen hope, when despair attempted complete desolation…
I am thoughtful – pushing back against the obnoxious simplistic…
I am an artist who observes and portrays beauty, both darkness and light…
I am a poet – a lover of all the senses and who gains freedom in savoring them well…
I am called to shed light – and there is light!
— Elizabeth Barrett Browning states, “Earth’s crammed with heaven, and every common bush afire with God; but only he who sees, takes off his shoes — The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries.”
Soli Deo Gloria (SDG) is Latin for ‘Glory to God alone.’ Used by artists such as Johann Sebastian Bach and George Frideric Handel, it is added, signifying the work was produced as an act of praising God. I’ve copied their idea and have had many who’ve asked what the letters SDG mean when placed near my signature.
For me, each painting is a small human attempt at reflecting light and expressing gratitude back to the light giver, Jesus Christ, the only incarnation of the creator God in human history.
My hope is that some of my ‘I am’s’ above will push through the rim of life’s mist with the gleam of atmospheric light. Maybe it will encourage some struggler in the darkest depths to persevere while seeking help. For others, it will at least give some insight into my purposes of ‘making aware.’
Part of this is journey was producing a 160 page full colour coffee table book, a compilation of some anecdotal life recollections – Psalms, if you will. There are 61 short essays and/or poems found on the facing pages from the over 100 paintings included in the book. This ‘blog’ has the same title as the book. ‘Radiance Through the Rain.‘
by J. Douglas Thompson | Mar 30, 2023 | General Information
Wondering while Wandering…
…an artist’s limp toward finding ‘Radiance Through the Rain’
‘May the Rain of Suffering Soften Our Hearts,
Seeping Radiance to Our Thirsty Places.’
J. Douglas Thompson© 2023
“By giving words to these intimate experiences I can make my life available to others…” Henri Nouwen*
I’m just a pilgrim, nothing fancy, a wandering artist. I think, ponder long and hard, enquire with difficult questions, listen well, pray fitfully and finally, give myself a chance to engage my will, to choose belief and or not. In my case it has been in the affirmative.
My desire in writing these disparate thoughts is to awaken awareness, encourage endurance, and bless beauty with wild creativity.
To get there however, it is foundational to raise the curtain and set the stage.
There is a backdrop of a dark soul’s night grasping pitons of evasive moving light. A cautious traverse into blue-black darkness. Scaling cumulous light cliffs of silver white gleaming and repelling cavernous thunders dark.
It screams aloud then sings poetic soft, rants honest doubt with hands raised high in simultaneous praise, gratitude, and back splashed worships wonder.
It is full-out conundrum!
It is wild Mustangs, fling of mane and immodest head shake snort as it races freedoms brow. It throws across life’s canvas, savage splashes painted full-out primary and softly, silently, exacts the joy of sepia’s single line.
Sorrow’s cup surges dams brim of broken years as tears flow turbulent heavy in lament while further down, laughter’s joy gurgles long forgotten throat, and calm’s soothing soft.
It is complex… and then to add to that how some theological achromatics are so often painted only as narrow primaries.
It pushes hard against being corralled, yet knows the value of love-directed bit and rein. It expresses sighs of lies, weary worn of legalistic rant. It smiles wide at full bodied, thick tongue-rolled flavor of life’s stolen wine. It is about passion, the aliveness of all that invites the capture of sensual’s five.
It feels dangerous!
It expresses crushing crucible living with painted silhouettes of tree twisted gale dancing, back lit wind living, that seep light as tangos move stage left to sun-dappled grace.
The valley’s struggle sticks sweaty back, tear-stained, years far too long, and finds this wrestler left with strength bereft, face held close in hands cupped warm in hollow soft… the cup of love itself.
This record… a personal journey of raw wounds and bandaged hope, includes the pus of dark abuse and the rim-light of love, affection, forgiveness, acceptance and freedom’s flirtations.
It could take it’s cue from the well-used title of the poem of St. John of the Cross on spiritual sand gravel living, ‘The Dark Night of the Soul.’ Light’s hope is perceived greatest when the backdrop is cave black.
Ultimately, thoughts of devotional gratitude lead along steep cliff paths of praise and joy. Beauty beheld, but not likely, days of cloudless skies and azure blue where care has skipped away, and daisies picked in thoughtless shallow. No, much more likely, it is about misty grey, wet dripping slate grey days that scheme again to take me down and cumulous heights and magic lights that wink warm pink just before darkness comes again.
It is about my push against personal darkness. A pushback at a lifetime struggle with depression, oppression and sometimes misguided spiritualization. My mentor master has the moniker, ‘A man of sorrow and acquainted with grief.’ This sojourner eternal was in the constant crosshairs of the pharisaical and politically expedient until perfection was murdered cold. That mentor, now, sits resurrection high and blows to and fro through Spirit’s soft winds care and chooses bleeding co-authored hands and feet with human skin on, obedience to rim-light hope again.
These are my realities. Just me, a simple struggling human artist. A painter who, in simplicity, perseverance and endurance attempts through the subtle metaphoric to reflect the wild face of his creator friend and his crucified redemptive care and love through the created and sustained cosmos.
To be called devotional may be a stretch. I reflect on Psalms past long, anecdotes of adjacent dark to juxtaposed light, struggle thrashed against conflicted rest, lust, and fragrant bouquets of grace. I’m attempting here to scumble and stroke with words instead of paint, the back-and-forth swing of prose to poetry, with a heart that longs towards redemptions long-lost longings to bring wishful encouragement to fellow stumblers and sojourners.
And yet through it all…Yes, I will praise Him!
“By giving words to these intimate experiences, I can make my life available to others…” Henri Nouwen, Seeds of Hope, Image books December 1997 pp32*
by J. Douglas Thompson | Mar 13, 2023 | General Information
Wondering while Wandering…
…an artist’s limp toward finding ‘Radiance Through the Rain’
‘May the Rain of Suffering Soften Our Hearts,
Seeping Radiance to Our Thirsty Places.’
- Douglas Thompson© 2023
On Sagan and Snow
A close friend of mine recently posted the words of the thoughtful, profound writer and scientist Carl Sagan, along with recent NASA images looking back from space showing our little blue dot in context to the ever-expanding cosmos.
When beginning this ‘blog’ or ‘Thoughts on Art, Life, Philosophy, and Faith from my Studio…’, I said that I might ask more questions than attempt to provide answers. These questions crossed my mind today regarding a recent snowfall last night and the post I read this morning.
In another essay, Sagan makes a statement worth consideration.
‘Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.’ Carl Sagan
Hmmm….? I wonder what or who that might be? Has it, or have they arrived already?
He writes in the post I mentioned…
“Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot.
Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment, the Earth is where we make our stand.
It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.”
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
Among those thousands of confident religions, he refers to, a founder of one, (which may or may not actually be in this category) claimed something far greater than just being a person in history who provided great teachings for humanity to follow. In fact, as esteemed author C.S. Lewis stated, and I paraphrase, he must have been a lunatic to claim what he did unless, of course, he was the real deal…hmmm. Was he?
Just maybe we do hold a privileged position in the universe. Let’s take, for instance, his statement ‘mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.’ Why does this ‘mote of dust’ blue look like a rich blueberry floating? Yes, the undergirding of our planet is made of dusty minerals, as are the others, but what covers it here that gives it cosmological uniqueness? Water and its reflective nature. And, of course, the ‘sunbeam.’ Not too close, not too far. Those of us who live in northern climates know that the winter access to that sun is tenuous, both in the amount of light we receive and the amount of warmth. We and all other living things are primarily made of water.
Certainly, we have air to breathe, beauty to behold, love to share, and all of our senses to absorb all the richness of good things. That, to me, to name just a couple, seems ‘like a privilege’ in comparison to the blinding heat or intense cold with bleak dusty death everywhere you look in cosmic deep, if, in fact, you had the miracle of sight to see with. Just maybe we were chosen to belong here, to love here, create here, and to recognize, yes indeed, our puniness in relation to most things, let alone the universe. We also have individual value. Who would have given us that idea? Are we cared for? Do we belong? Is there an ultimate home, or do we drift into the dark cosmic dust forever?
Is our planet just a lonely speck of dust, as is suggested, or something created for existential value and sustained from a source far beyond our puny selves? That whacko lunatic from Palestine that everyone seems to use his name disparagingly in their idle chatter seemed to think so. At least, he claimed to be. Yes, and history informs me well with far more hints than any other historical figure, that indeed, ‘someone was coming to save us from ourselves.’ Hmmm?
Yes, here, I fully agree with Sagan. ‘The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment, the Earth is where we make our stand…and yes, ‘it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.’
Again, interestingly if one studies that one, that lunatic, who claims to have begun it all, from let’s say, ‘The Big Bang’ outward and even now, ever-expanding from one possible multiverse to yet another, or, in the other direction, to the ‘micro-cosmos’ found within each living thing as science discovers the wonders of life itself. Both have the same intrinsic design elements showing us that there are existing galaxies both very near and yet to be explored far beyond.
We humans, however, often, when, through our minds, we have been given to rationally think and ask questions and make choices, have given ourselves too much credit for the discoveries and results we enjoy. We as humans unpeel the onionskins of what has been laid in mystery before us like the ultimate Russian doll.
For instance, last night on this ‘dusty lonely blue dot,’ in Ontario, Canada, along with other areas of North America, a Texas low blew through where we all received millions of tons of snow that blanketed our properties and provided incredible beauty when left untouched. Thankfully, I finally got shoveled out after two days.
Like the planets, which I assume, is maybe named by someone somewhere, we here on planet earth, each of us has our own unique ‘named’ fingerprints. Each snowflake has a completely unique design—trillions of them, even across the acres out my window. All of our eight billion humans and, yes, counting also have special uniqueness in multiple ways. We are not delusional as is suggested; just lost accidental dust balls running to-and-fro until we add to the ‘dusty blue dot.’ Rather we are individually cherished, somewhere by someone, but with greater value than the snowflakes.
I have my own beliefs, obviously, having studied theology for decades. They are not based on mindless random brain chatter, but rather on solid historicity that blows away with a great quantity of other historical documented reality that we accept without question as having complete veracity.
To me, it’s much more a thing of joy to at least have a source for which to say ‘thank you’ when I see the snow through my camera lens or mix paint on my palette as I attempt to mimic on one-dimensional canvas the three-dimensional (at least) objects that pound with the beat of watery life and yes, a little dust. I am constantly grateful.
by J. Douglas Thompson | Feb 27, 2023 | General Information
Wondering while Wandering…
…an artist’s limp toward finding ‘Radiance Through the Rain’
‘May the Rain of Suffering Soften Our Hearts,
Seeping Radiance to Our Thirsty Places.
J. Douglas Thompson© 2022
Mark Making…from mind to reality
An artist paints and displays their work. An engineer designs and oversees construction of a complex bridge. An architect thinks and produces amazing feats of anti-gravitational beauty and grandeur. A chef initially stirs together the delectable sauces in the kitchen of his mind, then, later, mixing and folding actual layers of texture and taste, he or she presents the art to delight the guests palettes with innumerable delicacies.
Art is everywhere!
Why do designer’s design and chefs create?
One grand difference between humans and all other species is the ability to consciously create, making marks, and with those marks, communicating to others. Even our spoken words have their foundation in marks having been previously made.
These marks invite others to swirl and savor their joys or sorrows around the tongues of their minds as they become infused into their lives. The use of line, color, texture, taste, reflection and design bring us up short, causing us to respond to human endeavor and what it does for our souls growth and wellbeing. Out of interest, the ‘human soul’ consists of the ‘mind, will and emotion.’ All of nature is calling us to think beyond just their deep biological structures, asking us to consider the other deeper ‘Why’ questions, including ‘why beauty?’
There are societal segments that demand that beauty is a misnomer and that all is just meaningless, mindless, coincidental, random purposeless particle populating.
There are those of us however given the mantle of producing something from the mind to touch other’s sensibility. This is not simply brain synapses firing randomly but personal soul savoring sharing. These are those responding to their inner gifts with deep creative action based on a hope or dream of an actuality.
As a painter, I spend months each year designing and producing works of fine art. Each piece is carefully completed with the introduction of a more or less abstract underpinning and then the building up layer after layer of paint passages and glazing thin layers over each. Most of those layers eventually lay virtually hidden from view but are held in the depths of the piece and provide the foundation it was built upon. People are often fascinated to see while looking at x-rays of old master’s pieces, where the mind of the artist wandered before settling on his final idea. In the last few days I added a small island with three small trees to a painting, thinking it would enhance the composition. Later, I felt it had done exactly the opposite and so they were covered over. The x-rays would show what I had had in mind and then ultimately decided a different direction.
There is one season of the year that I step aside from my production, carefully placing each piece on my gallery wall, ready for a viewer. My gallery is commercial in the sense that I sell my work from there as well as through other galleries. It is however a place of ‘free exploration’ for anyone who passes my way wishing to indulge their personal senses. These close encounters often bring thoughtful conversation and even sometimes an emotional connection to the art. Sometimes further is the event where someone wants to exchange hard-earned cash for a piece of paint-layered canvas. Why indeed would anyone want to exchange blood, sweat and tears for that?
One reason would be that the artist’s inner soul has leaked and spread out as marks, and is laid bare on that canvas. It invites a soul interaction with the other, who in fact is relating, not necessarily to the art directly but rather a previous life experience that the marks trigger. Somehow it brings back a memory or emotion from their personal life. The soul of the artist and viewer have collided and meshed. The purchaser wants to cherish the memory and thus a transaction happens to anchor the memory permanently on their wall. The ‘marks’ of one’s soul expression leaves the studio to become and to reflect another’s.
The fields clap their hands and flowers bloom with raucous vibrancy to at least attract a bee, but surely there is more. Each marked layer in creation and each mark made by his counterparts made in his image points back to the Creator. The Creator, by his own declaration (John 1:1) has filled the globe with a vast collaboration of his direct input by giving us myriad things to enjoy, touch and taste and also incorporating into our humanness the desire to create further using materials at our finger tips. Like it or not we are expressing our image bearing likeness through those creations and our reactions of them!
“The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it.” (Psalm 24:1 NIV)
Mark Making…
by J. Douglas Thompson | Feb 13, 2023 | General Information
Wondering while Wandering…
…an artist’s limp toward finding ‘Radiance Through the Rain’
‘May the Rain of Suffering Soften Our Hearts,
Seeping Radiance to Our Thirsty Places.’
J. Douglas Thompson© 2022
Todays thought via this poem relates to the strong winds of disconcertion regarding world events that pervade our spaces daily and how the White Pine of the north gives us thoughts of response.
Granite Places*
Inhospitable – hard – windswept – bare
Granite horseshoe wildly flung
Vast and north, strong and free
Canadian Shield.
Emaciated quilt of threadbare soil thinly carpets vast expanse
Quilts – so easily displaced – lay bare this giant’s plate
Revealing slightest pink – textured lines striate – memories from icy wars.
There they rise – emerging
Seeming impossibility
Deriding dust so wafer thin
Titans tall of windswept green – reach to touch and kiss the sky
Swaying stately splendour strong.
Below at base – the fissure waits
Giant’s lonely seed is blown
Tumbling red faced, to the void
Whack!
Naked and exposed it falls
Avian breakfast seeks above? Whew!
Shiver shakes it full awake
Decisions nose right in the face
To hope and dream for future’s sake?
Thoughts – these crazy thoughts
Visions – vast with arms to sweep
Expressions praise and shade to give.
Digging deep – to cut through stone
Really?
Granite?
Imperceptible topsoil
Ridiculous
Kill the dream!
Impossible – growth – that large?
Roll over – take a nap
Give rest a try
Go back, they say – and close your door
Dream your dreams – but far away
Expose your head?
Annihilate?
I hear it speak – that lowly seed
Throbbing choices to endure
Reaching down and reaching up
Pushing back the darkness deep
Gestation’s travel now complete – new life’s about to come
Tiny head peeks skyline’s orb and – groans
Scorching heat of summer’s sun
Blasts of autumn’s freezing rain
Depth of frostbite’s bitter bite
Year to follow lonely year.
Faithful faces tests of time
Mock and ridicule deride
Sneering, laughing, shaking heads
Walking backs again depart
Bother?
Why? Just shrivel up – and die
No one there to see or care
Yet…
Monolith’s monicker, great white pine
Grandeur’s dance from stage afar
Bent with windswept backs they stand
Trademarks of the stalwart north.
Wild framed warriors – scars abound
Contorted mar of deepest scar
Groans of grief – misunderstood
Twisted broken limbs that speak – and so they lean
Quietly, humbly into view.
Artist paints His masterpiece
Single focal point he claims – astounding art – all that remains
Image of decided truth
Gracing palace walls where
Thousands come to stand and gaze
Stay to revel and to praise
Giving up?
Yes, YOU!
Crushed with pressure-crevice living?
Walk away?
To be sure – temptations strong
Softness winks her warm caress
Enticingly says, ‘disengage’
Constant storms too much you say?
Long and lonely vigils wait
Broken through obedience
Surrounded and embraced by few
Raising standards very high
Billowed, bent and sails all full
Driving roots through solid rock
Framed in grace a light to spot
Short-lived lives – to count or not?
So let me say, keep at it, despite the heavy legs and elbows worn thin having done what is right, for, when all is said and done, when the King arrives back, there will be fair reward, if we hang in there, not having slipped out the back door, but rather keeping on keeping on with tenacity Galatians 6:9 JDT paraphrase
* Excerpt from ‘Radiance through the Rain’ Copyright 2020, J. Douglas Thompson
My previous book ‘Radiance through the Rain’ is a self-published, hard-cover limited edition coffee table book showing more than 100 images of my paintings. Alongside of the paintings are sixty-one essays on how the act of painting is a metaphor for doing life and relationships. Much of that thinking will bleed into this blog, but here, this is just you and I quietly pondering our devotional lives. For those of you who purchased ‘Radiance Through the Rain,’ maybe you think some of my wandering thoughts are worth sharing. This blog is the venue!
Carpe Diem, 48″ X 60″ Acrylic on Canvas © J.Douglas Thompson
by J. Douglas Thompson | Feb 1, 2023 | General Information
Wondering while Wandering…
…an artist’s limp toward finding ‘Radiance Through the Rain’
‘May the Rain of Suffering Soften Our Hearts,
Seeping Radiance to Our Thirsty Places.’
J. Douglas Thompson© 2022
Thought’s on Mists
My easel today holds memories, recollections of what was and what I have left to consider to re-describe as I cast my mind over the past seventy-three years. I love taking photographs, but that is a separate love affair from that of painting. I seldom use any of my photos as a reference when painting. Each stands alone.
Today, I paint and while pushing my paint, I’m prone to ponder! The coming ‘letters from my studio,’ will be throwback thoughts across my life as an artist and a photographer with a bit of faith and philosophy thrown in.
What usually occurs when painting, is my hand dips paint with a rag or paper towel and then begins the slashing and whipping of rag against canvas. Sometimes while slapping the paint around an image appears that triggers a memory and if not, oh well, at least I’m left with texture.
Today what is coming to fruition from rag to canvas is an old memory of Alberta, Canada’s Lake Louise veiled in the heart of the Rockies. It shimmers turquoise. The sun slants left, mountainside clearly showing the rock face holding interesting patterns of ice-white water otherwise described as snow.
Up and over the first third of my composition stand a group of rugged pines showing their resolute passion for survival, with backs held ramrod straight. This is somewhat different from their cousins of the east, the Great White Pine. Found on the Canadian Shield, which is made of solid granite, it stretches far north beyond human habitation. There the pines lean way right, having a strong west wind blow them strident since birth.
However, here I am, by means of memory, sitting in my studio chair, my mind next to the lake. This, for the most part will be my way of sharing my journey and stories. A breeze sends a cold signal that maybe things are not as well as maybe they seem. A mist swirls down from the heights, adding a negligee of blue-white light over the rock verticals.
Mists come as the mysterious Spirit comes, first a breeze, a tender touch that kisses my cheek, leaving it slightly wet as the mist envelopes my view.
Sometimes the Spirit enlightens with warmth and sometimes adds a veil. The why and wherefore of the Spirit’s call to humanity is a mystery. I still see some of the hard formation that lays behind, but mostly it is misty grey. Life is seldom a clear-cut course.
More than often, we take slow steps, or well we should, as we navigate life’s journey. Sometimes the mists suddenly lift, and we see that all is well, and warmth surrounds our steps. And then, just as suddenly, a corner turned, and the wall of grey seems to pull us in, and our fears arise. Life is struggle! The flip side of pain is joy! Grey mists, darkness and sunlight. Despite the variables, keep putting your proverbial foot one step ahead of the last and choose to ‘Live!’
The eastern lakes mists steal lower shoals as across the bed of night they wrap all in the comforter of thoughts alone until the sun winks her soft hello. Maybe a fire in a hearth breaks its silent steal where humanity attempts to push away the darkness. It is here I want to dwell for a moment today.
The early sun rises east casting her curling smile on the grey and the mist begins her dance. Together they weave their sensuous sway from the lake and up the mountain as warm interacts with cool.
Later, after coffee is done and bacon crisp has brought us its pleasures, the sun begins to blow its warmth and the mist disappears. About 11 a.m. and she’s gone! The mystery of wonder that refracted light into the wondrous soft silk of mist is now a memory.
So, it is with these, my few short years of life, and yours!
I sat tonight during my walk west, in a field down the way, and reflected on the evening sky and the mists that wanted in. My life is like the mist, and yes will soon cover all as I pass into eternity.
My physical body is the present entity that enfolds the real me: my soul and spirit. This my cocoon will remain behind for the mourners and then disappear, too, but my spirit will remain, having travelled to a different dimension of interim wonder.
For today, I can have hope that as the mist envelops the here and now, there will be light again, and the field that I sat in tonight will re-appear, fully regenerated in its original wonder, perfection ready for a never-ending reality.
Finally, in all my paintings, my desire is to portray the light of hope peeking, even when most seems blue-grey mist. Often, the result is most beautiful when that soft light glazed, seen through the negligee, as she hides the veiled beauty of what can become if the invitation is accepted.
The Spirit of all mists comes suddenly, and then just as suddenly opportunity vanishes.
James 4:14 NIV …‘Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.’
I love it when mists surround the landscape in mystery
